Save Sekhemka Action Group

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Thursday, 17 March 2016

In July 2014 a unique part of the World’s shared cultural heritage, the beautiful, four thousand year
old statue of the Egyptian Scribe Sekhemka, was privatised and locked away from view thanks to the
unethical actions of David Mackintosh MP, Northampton Borough Council and the, apparently,
morality free auction industry who, ignoring ethical objections, put the importance of obtaining a
world record price for an internationally important museum piece over the retention of it in a
museum for everyone to enjoy.

On 29 March 2016 the Culture Secretary, John Whittingdale, and his accomplice, Ed Vaizey, will lift
the temporary export ban the Department of Culture, Media and Sports (DCMS) placed on the
Sekhemka statue and it will almost certainly disappear from public view, possibly forever.
In all that time, as far as we are aware, there has been no effort by the British Government or any
British institution or museum to negotiate a loan with the anonymous purchaser to ensure the
statue finds a secure and permanent home in the UK.

This fact surely shows how totally unfit for purpose the current Export Ban system is. The Secretary
of State is able to impose a Temporary Export Ban because an object is seen as of national
importance, but can then happily sit back and do precisely nothing to ensure that such importance is
being recognised by the object being saved for the nation.

This willing impotence is even more unacceptable when all relevant bodies, including the
Government’s own statutory advisers such as Arts Council England, agree that the sale of Sekhemka
was utterly unethical and should never have taken place, particularly as there remain unresolved
legal questions surrounding the sale.

The Sekhemka Action Group has noted the gallant appeal by the Egyptian Ambassador to wealthy
Egyptians asking them to raise funds to repurchase Sekhemka; if this succeeds the statue would be
on display in Egypt for six months of the year and then in the UK for the next six months.

The offer is especially generous because the sale of Sekhemka has damaged the British reputation in
Egypt, suggesting to Egyptians that Britain’s comments that it seeks to stamp out trafficking in
antiquities are just public relations and that Egyptian Cultural objects are nothing more than a
cheque to be cashed at the bank.

However, the Save Sekhemka Action Group maintains that such a repurchase would be unethical
and unhelpful since the statue should not have been sold in the first place.

We also believe that a repurchase would send strong signals to other museums and institutions that
selling a valuable artefact would be acceptable since there would be the expectation that there will
always be somebody who would stump up the cash to repurchase it for the nation.

We are therefore resigned to the likelihood that we will never see this wonderful statue again and
that this stage of our fight to “rescue” Sekhemka and return him to a free public gallery is over.
However, this does not mean that we will shrink into a corner doing nothing. Our anger and
frustration at a broken system and the people, who either exploited it or who stood by wringing
their hands, crying crocodile tears but doing nothing to prevent that exploitation, requires that we
do not.

We recognise that the British museum world is in dire straits and, based on our experience with
Sekhemka and the numerous other cases of museum closures and object disposal, any attempt to
rescue it is not going to be led by the Department of Culture, Media and Sports, Arts Council England or the Museums Association. These bodies have demonstrated no practical initiative or leadership at a time when we are faced by unaccountable elites who can close or reassign a collection from one part of the country to another (usually London) at will, and supposedly accountable politicians who are quite happy to ride rough shod over ethics and even legal questions, to cash in and destroy overnight collections, museums and galleries which have taken decades if not centuries to build up. With Arts Council England and the Museums Association ultimately toothless in the absence of either the legal tools or the corporate will to protect the nation’s heritage it is up to us, ordinary people, to try to stop the cultural rot before all trace of the past disappears and with that the chance to show our children what we can be and what wonders we can create.

In that belief there is hope. All over the country people are fighting back against the attempts to create cultural wastelands in the name of austerity and efficiency and we feel that our experience from the Sekhemka campaign would benefit these various campaigns. For that reason we intend constituting ourselves into a new campaign group and return to the fight.

Sekhemka was a battle, not the entire war, which is far from over.

Gunilla Loe, Chair

On behalf of
the Save Sekhemka Action Group, Great Britain
and
the Save Sekhemka Action Group, Egypt

Friday, 2 October 2015

The Action Groups are delighted to learn that the Department of Culture, Media and Sports and its Secretary of State, the Hon John Whittingdale MP, and its Minister for Arts, the Hon Ed Vaizey MP, have seen cultural sense by extending the Export Ban on the Sekhemka statue until 29 March 2016, thus hopefully ensuring that it remains in the UK.

We will continue to monitor the situation. Meanwhile we sincerely hope that negotiations with the, as yet, anonymous buyer and the current owner of Sekhemka will bear fruit and that one of the UK’s major museums will give the statue a new home – perhaps even the new museum complex proposed for the Olympic Park !We also hope that this decision will discourage small and large museums from selling off their treasures and that there will be a way forward for the museum world in conjunction with the DCMS, Arts Council England and the Museums Association to KEEP collections intact for the enjoyment and education of future generations. We wish the museum world strength and tenacity making this possible in true co-operation with each other.This decision also sends a very strong international message: the UK and its government will not stand idly by tolerating illegal sales of looted artefacts, smuggling of artefacts or laundering of money rather the UK will adhere to the strong ICOM ethics that enable our world heritage to remain intact.The Action Groups wish to thank all their supporters and we are glad we stayed with the “fight” to save Sekhemka which we now hope will benefit the rest of the museum world and our heritage. We owe this to our future generations.

Tuesday, 1 September 2015

PRESS STATEMENT TO BRITISH AUTHORITIES ON ANTIQUITIES AND HUMAN RIGHTS

It is the right of all nations to be able to look and see the works of human civilisations and gain knowledge from the human history of civilisation. To be able to watch the sequence effects that reflect the cultures and history of all States.

The sale of Sekhemka is a crime against humanity in the right of the world and the Egyptian people. The authorities in charge of Northampton Museum have blocked the Pharaonic civilisation from the eyes of the world by selling the statue of Sekhemka in an auction in order to raise funds to expand the museum. For the Museum to be trading in antiquities for financial gain is a humanitarian disaster and an event which should never have happened in the history of museums.

The selling of Sekhemka is a major crime against the people of the world. Selling the statue to an anonymous buyer and moving the statue to an unknown place means that the whole world will be deprived of the knowledge of the ancient Egyptian civilisation, which is considered a crime against humanity.

The Save Sekhemka Group London and Egypt ask the intervention of all organisations concerned with human rights in Britain to help reverse the contract of the Sekhemka sale and to put the statue on display in a museum in Britain to show the public around the world what Pharaonic civilisation is. If the statue is not of any importance to Northampton Museum, the statue is the right and property of the Egyptian people and then ethically the Sekhemka statue MUST be returned back to its homeland and placed in the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square for Egyptians and the tourists visiting Egypt to see the Pharaonic civilisation.

The Save Sekhemka Action Group London and Egypt

PRESS STATEMENT TO THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT, ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND AND THE BRITISH MUSEUM COMMUNITY

It is the human right of all nations to be able to see, enjoy and learn from the products of human history and civilisation.

Thus the sale of the Sekhemka statue by the Northampton Borough Council is in its way a crime against humanity. By selling the statue, which was held in trust for the public in the Northampton Museum, Northampton Council has denied the world a jewel of Pharaonic civilisation. What is worse, in taking on the role of antiquities dealer Northampton Council has engineered a disaster for the international museum community, diminishing the trust of the public in all our museums and encouraging those who use antiquities as commodities to be cashed in for gain. Even those criminals and terrorists who would loot, traffic and sell the birth right of nations to raise funds and launder dirty money.

If the selling of Sekhemka, a unique and irreplaceable wonder of Egyptian Art and Culture, is a major crime against the people of the world and puts other antiquities in danger, selling the statue to an anonymous buyer compounds the crime. This action moves Sekhemka from the world of a living museum where the statue can be seen and enjoyed to unknown place which deprives the world of the knowledge embodied by Sekhemka.

The Save Sekhemka Action Group in Northampton with its fellow campaigners in London and Egypt ask the intervention of all individuals and organisations with an interest in the enjoyment and celebration of the diverse cultures of the world to uphold the Human Right of the public to see Sekhemka as was always intended by those who originally placed the statue in Northampton Museum.

A way must be found to keep Sekhemka on display in a museum in Britain to show the public around the world what a glory the Pharaonic civilisation of Egypt represents.

If the UK Government, Arts Council England and the UK Museum Community cannot come up with such a solution, then the Sekhemka statue MUST be returned to its homeland of Egypt and placed in an Egyptian Museum for the pleasure and education of tourists visiting Egypt and the modern custodians of Egypt’s culture, the Egyptian people.

The Ancient Egyptians believed that a person lived as long as their name was remembered. It is now up to the British Government, Arts Council England and the Museum Community, to decide how Sekhemka’s name is to be remembered: as a shining name to be shared with the world or as a name forevere tarnsihed with the stain of ignorance and greed dragging down the names of those who allowed this cultural crime to happen.

Saturday, 22 August 2015

We are sadded and upset at the execution of Dr Asaad in Palmyra. He was killed because he regarded the archaeological treasures of his homeland as more important than his life and how important this makes our fight to keep Sekhemka safe in order not to encourage looting, illegal selling and smuggling of antiquities to raise money for those involved in civil wars. We are lucky to be able to protest in a peaceful country and that we admire and respect all our academic fellows in war torn countries who daily risk life and limb to preserve their cultures for future generations.Details about Dr Asaad can be found here: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/18/isis-beheads-archaeologist-syria

Friday, 24 July 2015

DAVID CAMERON, IT IS NOT TOO LATE FOR YOU TO STEP IN AND PREVENT A CULTURAL CRIME WHICH ONLY AIDS THE SO CALLED ISLAMIC STATE AND OTHER CRIMINALS WHO SEEK TO TRAFFIC ANCIENT ART AND ANTIQUITIES.

On 10 July 2014 the statue of the Ancient Egyptian civil servant Sekhemka, one of the jewels of Egyptian and World Art was sold to an anonymous buyer at Christie's in London for £15.76 million. The sale of this irreplaceable part of the museum collection held in care for the public by Northampton Council was opposed by the Arts Council, the Museums Association, the Art Fund, and the International Council of Museums, as well as local people in Northampton [1].

In just five days time on July 29 2015, a temporary export ban, placed on the statue by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey, will expire and the buyer will be free to obtain an export licence and send Sekhemka anywhere in the world, possibly never to be seen in public again.

One of the principle reason for the international opposition to the sale was the increasing evidence that such sales benefit no-one except the international auction houses who see their profits increased and international terrorists and criminal gangs who fund their activities by trafficking and selling art and archaeological artefacts like the statue of Sekhemka. If auction house prices rise, so do the profits of the criminal and terrorist traffickers and forgers [2] .

However, it is still not too late for you to turn Britain's shame in being party to such an unethical sale into pride at Britain working with the Egyptian people to make amends for this indelible stain on Britain's cultural reputation.

We are asking you to make an urgent public intervention with Christie's and the buyer of the Sekhemka statue and ask the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to broker a binding agreement whereby the statue remains in the UK on free public display in a British museum.

We are also asking you to make clear that you deplore the sale of publicly held museum collections for profit in a way which can only drive up the prices and the rewards for such unethical behaviour.

The only thing preventing such an intervention is the will of the British Government to be seen to do the right thing, while your intervention will not just preserve a beautiful and uniquely evocative example of Egypt's ancient art and culture for the public and visitors to Britain to enjoy. It will send a message that Britain cares about the cultural jewels it has in its care and will not in future allow them to be exploited for short term gain in a way which only encourages criminals, traffickers and terrorists to set out to loot and sell more.

Tuesday, 21 April 2015

STATEMENT FROM THE
SAVE SEKHEMKA ACTION GROUP re the TEMPORARY EXPORT BAN FOR THE SEKHEMKA STATUE

Following the Temporary Export ban
imposed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Save Sekhemka
Action Group are campaigning for an agreement whereby the buyer of the
internationally important Egyptian Statue,sold by Northampton Borough Council in 2014,loans the statue to a major UK Museum where
it can be once again placed on public display.

We will also continue our investigations into the legality of the original
sale.

Background to the statement

In July 2014 the then Leader of Northampton Borough Council
(NBC), Councillor David Mackintosh [i], defied national
and international advice and breached internationally held codes of museum
ethics to sell Northampton’s equivalent to the Elgin Marbles, the 4,500 years
old statue of the Egyptian Royal Scribe, Sekhemka, by auction at Christie’s in
London.The statue was sold to an unknown
overseas buyer who paid a World Record Price of £15.76 million.[ii]

The Department of Culture, Media and Sports has now clamped
a temporary ban on the export of the statue.[iii]Such a temporary ban is meant to help groups
who wish to retain the statue in the UK to either raise funds for its purchase,
or to come up with other plans to enable the statue to be retained on public display
in the UK.

The Save Sekhemka Action Group [SSAG] have opposed the sale
since October 2012 when it first became clear that the protests and warnings
from the Friends of Northampton Museums & Art Gallery (FNMAG) would be
ignored by Cllr Mackintosh and NBC.FNMAG and the Action Group repeatedly warned that the accreditation of
Northampton’s museums would be lost and with it access all outside funding which
required accreditation, including the Heritage Lottery Fund.We were right.Accreditation was stripped from Northampton’s
Museums immediately after the sale and the Borough has already missed out on
tens of thousands of pounds in grant funding.[iv]

We objected to the commercial sale of the statue of Sekhemka
because it was immoral, unethical and unprofessional.However, our research also leads us to
suggest the legality of the sale is also doubtful.The Deed of Gift of 1880 under which Sekhemka
and other Egyptian artefacts as well as geological collections were given to
Northampton Corporation by the 4th Marquis of Northampton made the
gift on condition they were always on display and never sold –in either case
the collections would then revert to the Compton family.Thus Sekhemka may not even have been NBC’s to sell

Given the very serious legal and
ethical questions which continue to cloud the sale of Sekhemka, the Save
Sekhemka Action Group intend to tackle the present issue on three fronts:

a) We
will NOT be part of ANY fundraising attempt to buy the statue from the present
owner.

To do so would be to risk giving legitimacy
to similar sales contemplated by other Local Authorities.Instead we advocate the negotiation of a LONG
TERM LOAN of the statue to one of the UK’s major museums where it can be seen
at all times by the public and where it will be cared for properly.We will actively pursue this aim with Arts
Council England, the Museums Association, the Art Fund, and all relevant
professional museum bodies

b) We
will also seek to establish once and for all the legality of the sale.

We will do this through our research into
the records in Egypt in order to ascertain whether the statue was legally
exported in 1850, and into the records of Northampton Borough Council to expose
the legal and financial arrangements Cllr Mackintosh reached with the Marquis
of Northampton.

c) We will
also ask DCMS and Arts Council England to investigate whether Northampton
Borough Council misled Christie’s as to the true ownership of the statue and
whether Christie’s undertook due diligence in accepting the artefact for sale.

Northampton Borough Council claimed to be
the owner of the statue on the sale agreement with Christie’s and a senior NBC
Officer signed the agreement to this effect.[v]However, the Museums Association disciplinary
procedure found that the issue of ownership was far from settled and NBC did
not indisputably own the statue.[vi]This puts into question the entire legality
of the sale.

We ask:

What was the deal whereby Lord Northampton agreed not to challenge the sale and agreed to relinquish his legal right to the statue?

Why, when NBC told Christie’s that they owned Sekhemka, signed a sales agreement stating this and paid all the sales fees and premiums, was the Marquis of Northampton then paid over £6 million of public money?[vii]

Was the £50,000+ which NBC spent on legal expenses in an apparently abortive attempt to show it owned Sekhemka a misuse of public money which in the end only benefited a private individual to the tune of over £6 million?

Our determination to get to the bottom of
the sale of Sekhemka is re-enforced by the fact that we were advised that we
had a case for a Judicial Review. And because our attempts to investigate these
matters have been repeatedly frustrated due to what we regard as a spurious
application of commercial confidentiality.Commercial confidentiality cannot apply to the sale of an object owned
by the public.Instead it is an issue of
the proper ACCOUNTABILITY OF PERSONS IN PUBLIC OFFICE.

The Action Group does appreciate the powerful
message sent to museums by ACE and the Museums Association regarding sales from
public collections – we hope it will work.Sadly we think it might be too little too late and it certainly did not
help in the Sekhemka case.

What is undoubtedly true is that the actions
of Councillor Mackintosh and his administration have left the reputation of
Northampton in shreds.

Monday, 30 March 2015

It has been announced today that Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has said that Sekhemka will not be allowed to leave the country.

The BBC are reporting that "Mr Vaizey made the decision following a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA), which is administered by Arts Council England."

The BBC also quote the RCEWA who are reported to have said that the statue was of "outstanding aesthetic importance" and was significant in the study of "the development of private statuary and funerary religion in Egypt and the history of human self-representation".

The Save Sekhemka Action Group are delighted that the Government has imposed a temporary export ban on the Statue of Sekhemka and we fervently hope that this will be upheld as a permanent ban on 29 July and Sekhemka, an internationally important work of Egyptian Art, will find a home in a public museum where it belongs.

The decision of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA) to recommend the ban, not only vindicates our position as to the importance of Sekhemka as a work of art, but also provides much needed clarity as, until now today's announcement, we were not even able to establish that the buyer was from outside the UK. This was because while the statue is of international importance, was owned by the people of Northampton and was sold by a publicly accountable body, their Council, the process was carried out behind the cloak of privacy and commercial confidentiality.

If the statue of Sekhemka is to be lost to the people of Northampton who enjoyed it for over one hundred years we would like to see Sekhemka retained in the UK. The only problem is WHERE and HOW it could be retained and displayed since the sale itself was unethical and there is evidence it was also of doubtful legality. As a consequence none of the UK's major museums wished to acquire it unless it was GIVEN outright - a public body cannot buy something owned by another public body, it is unethical and a misapplication of public money.

We also understand that the Art Fund was outraged when we told them about the proposed sale and declared they would not then help raise funds for a purchase.

Northampton Borough Council committed an act of great folly selling the statue of Sekhmeka. Even greater was the folly when NBC agreed to buy off Lord Northampton to the tune of £7m thus halving their profit, rather than submitting to a transparent legal clarification of the statue's actual ownership. Now the consequences of this folly are even more apparent: Northampton museums have lost their Accreditation and with that all access to outside funding resulting in a loss of about a third of their income ( in our estimation) - This is not a good position from which to contemplate an extension to the Central Museum.

The Action Group will actively work to uphold the export ban through our many contacts and explore ways of how the statue can be kept in the UK.